Catherine O'Hara

Home Alone star who was known for her warmth and ability to move people as well as her genius for comedy

- Vanessa Thorpe

Catherine O'Hara: 'Classy, warm and hilarious all at the same time.'

(Robbie Klein/ Getty Images for IMDB)

Catherine O'Hara is beyond funny," Lynn Hirschberg wrote in a 1983 Rolling Stone magazine interview with the young Canadian actor. "She makes you laugh, yes, and her acting is certainly comedic, but O'Hara is not funny in the raucous National Lampoon or Saturday Night Live tradition...

"Hers is, instead, the comedy of negative space, of sinking so deeply into a character that even silences are defining," Hirschberg added in an article that was partly trying to solve a mystery: why had O'Hara suddenly dropped out of her regular spot on the very popular satirical show Second City Television (SCTV)? This weekend the unexpected death at 71 of the Emmy-award-winning star of Home Alone and Schitt's Creek foreseeably prompted emotional tributes from many costars and admirers, including Macaulay Culkin, Pedro Pascal, Seth Rogen and Tim Burton, who directed her in Beetlejuice. But the tone of many tributes has also been marked by a sorrowful sense that O'Hara had been slightly forgotten by the industry during the middle stretch of her long career. Her stylish comic presence was placed centre stage again, rather too late.

"We are at a loss for words at the passing of our friend," said Rogen, her costar on his hit Netflix sitcom The Studio. "She was a hero to all of us, and we pinched ourselves every day that we got to work with her.